It's been a month since Rick McCormick was named Arkansas Tech's new men's basketball coach, and there's still work to be done before he gets totally settled into his new office at Tucker Coliseum.

That's not to mean McCormick hasn't been busy with his new job.

"We've started early in the morning and worked until late at night," he said during a visit Tuesday afternoon. "We're working on a lot of different things right now, and we've been going from 7:30 in the morning to 10:30 at night. We're still behind on some things, but we'll be catching up pretty soon.

"But it's all still fun to me. I'm enjoying and loving every minute of it. I'm still as excited now as I was that day when I was named the new coach here."

McCormick has been so busy with things concerning the Wonder Boys that he has put his personal needs aside for the moment. Instead of finding himself a place to live, McCormick spent Tuesday morning working with current players Daniel Watson and Jeremy Johnson as they prepared for their first day of summer school.

"I'm staying in the dorm right now, and that's good enough," McCormick said. "Our first priority is working with the players that we have retained. They're on schedule to graduate now, but we want them to go well beyond that right now. We want to put them in the best possible situation to graduate.

"Secondly, we've been working on hiring the rest of our staff, and that's so time-consuming. It's a case of where you have to know people, then call and make inquiries. Recruiting, of course, becomes a strong priority, and then there's the day-to-day things here on campus. So we're on campus from 8 to 5 doing stuff that we can do, then spend the evening on the phone recruiting players."

One would think McCormick and the Wonder Boys are in trouble, seeing he has signed only two players since taking over the position and Tech graduated six seniors. Also, NCAA coaches are currently in a "dead period," where they are forbidden until June 15 to go out and visit players, but that hasn't stopped McCormick from hitting the phones hard, talking to players.

"We're needing to sign about five more players, possibly six," McCormick said. "As far as needs go, we're really looking for point guards and those number four or five players [power forwards and centers]. But if we can get a great player right now, then we'll take then at any position.

"I know that sounds bad right now, but we could have four players wrapped up and signed by the end of next week. All this time, we've been trying to lay the ground work for a successful basketball program, and I've been waiting until summer school started before getting some players in for their visits. I wanted the recruits to see a campus with some vibrance and see people going to class here."

In the meantime, McCor-mick said he will continue to work on getting life and excitement back into men's basketball at Tech. However, the first step, he mentioned, must come from within.

"I have told our players that we have to win the respect of those on campus before we begin doing it outside," McCormick said. "When we begin playing winning basketball, then we'll earn the respect of our students, our faculty and our adminstration.

"Everything is going according to plan, and it all starts with the coaching staff and the players. If we're going to play a good brand of basketball, then it's going to start there. We're going to renew excitement in our program. We want it to be special, and we're going to see to it that it happens."